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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26520193">The Rutting Season</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/FestivalGrey/pseuds/FestivalGrey'>FestivalGrey</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Animal Transformation, Bad end, Bestiality, Breeding, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Impregnation, Interspecies, Interspecies Sex, Mind Manipulation, Permanent Transformation, Rape/Non-con Elements, Transformation, Transformation Through Sex, spending the rest of your life bearing animal children</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:15:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,968</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26520193</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/FestivalGrey/pseuds/FestivalGrey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>As a ranger, it's her duty to safeguard the elk herds here in the refuge. When she's kicked off duty during the rutting season, she won't stand for it. She's there to shepard them and shepard them she will. What's the worst that could happen?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Woman/Elk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>231</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Rutting Season</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I try to make my smile as genuine as possible. Don’t know how successful I am.</p><p>The woman sitting across from me, a lean, whipcord-thin old matron with hair like steel wool, shuffles papers on her desk. Her name is ‘Weathers’ and she is the superintendent here. “We’re glad to have you here at the refuge,” she says. “Your grades and CV are exemplary, and I think you’ll have a lot to offer to us.”</p><p>That brings out some bitterness. I <em>am </em>exemplary—but not exemplary enough to get a place I would have <em>liked, </em>apparently. Yellowstone would have been ideal, but I also would have loved to be a ranger at Acadia—Sequoia—even Bryce Canyon. But none of the big parks wanted me. I suppose the old adage is true; the outdoors is a man’s world, and all of the parks would rather hire a mediocre man over an exemplary woman as their ranger.</p><p>So no, I don’t get to be a ranger at Yellowstone. Instead, I get saddled with the ass-end of the system—the goddamned <em>Elk Refuge.</em></p><p>Somebody, gag me.</p><p>Weathers is looking at me critically and I realize that oops, I’ve let my emotions out, fuck, guess I’m going to lose the job as soon as I got it. I plaster on the sort of smile that would fit in a Listerine commercial and rattle off something about how excited I am to be here, but Weathers silences me with a wave.</p><p>“You don’t need to play,” she says. “The refuge wasn’t your first choice. It’s <em>nobody’s </em>first choice. We’re aware of that. But I hope you’ll find us a good fit nonetheless. We could always use good rangers.”</p><p>That actually does make me feel a little better. She’s a sensible woman and she doesn’t expect me to fake enthusiasm I don’t have. So long as I do the job and do it well (and at the risk of sounding immodest, there’s no other way I <em>can </em>do the job) I’ll fit in. I stand, shake her hand, thank her, and prepare for my new career here.</p><p>---</p><p>I’m the sort of woman you would expect to be a park ranger. Slightly above-average height, athletic build, face that has never seen even a hint of makeup. Shoulder-length hair that I don’t truss up; it usually stays in a ponytail. The sort of tanned skin and spray of freckles that comes from a life under the sun.</p><p>The work at the refuge is decent enough, I suppose. Not many tourists (why would there be? We’re not a park, we’re a place for elk herds to recuperate) so most of my time is spent in the woods themselves. There’s a number of herds inside the refuge, and I’m assigned the second-largest, which is an honor for a newbie. I shadow them from a distance, sometimes kitting out in a tent or a small shelter. I live off the land quite easily; I prefer sleeping in a tent and bedroll, cooking my meals in a small portable skillet over a wood fire, than to any noise-drowned apartment in the big city.</p><p>And if the prestige of working one of the bigger parks eludes me, I still find myself enjoying what I do here. From afar, I’ve come to appreciate the members of the herd as individuals. They have their own scientific designations, of course—“E42A” for the highest-ranking hind, or female; “E27B” for the bull who dominates the herd. But I’ve given them my own, private names.</p><p>I’ve named the leader of the herd “Prince.” It fits his lordly bearing, his sometimes prissy tantrums, and the impeccable crown of antlers atop his head. The lead female is “Autumn,” for her dappled coat; other important males include “Hyperion” and “Toreador.” One of my favorite members of the herd is Cedar, a spunky adolescent male who’s fearless and inquisitive.</p><p>I cut my teeth out in the wilderness over the summer and as fall approaches, I grow excited. September—the borderline between summer and fall—is the elk’s traditional rutting season, and being able to observe (and safeguard) the herd during this most crucial of times is one of a ranger’s most important duties. Even though I didn’t want this posting, I find myself eagerly awaiting the chance to show myself.</p><p>And then everything goes wrong.</p><p>In late August, Weathers abruptly calls me back to her office, and I have to leave behind the herd I’d grown so accustomed to. When I walk in, she looks apologetic, like she knows I’m not going to take whatever she tells me well.</p><p>(Spoiler alert: I don’t.)</p><p>Weathers tells me that I’ve done a great job for this summer and that she’s pleased with my work, but informs me that I’m going to be put on a temporary paid sabbatical, effective immediately and lasting until the first week of October.</p><p>I’m going to miss out on the rutting season.</p><p>“But this is the most important time of the year for the herd!” I protest. “They’re <em>my </em>charges, and you—you don’t even trust me to watch after them when they’re at their most vulnerable!”</p><p>Weathers spreads her hands apologetically. “I just feel it’s unsafe—”</p><p>“Unsafe?!” I shout back. I’m not thinking straight, this is my <em>boss </em>I’m shouting down, this could cost me my job, but right now I couldn’t give less of a fuck. “I fought off a grizzly bear, superintendent!”</p><p>(A slight exaggeration; there was no ‘fight,’ but a mother grizzly charged my camp once and I spooked her off with bear spray and by banging pots and pans together. Still, though.)</p><p>Weathers is both understanding and iron-willed. Apologetic she might be, she nonetheless insists that I’m temporarily off herd duty and that my paid leave will end when rutting season is over. I leave and return to my cabin at the edge of the refuge in a sulky mood.</p><p>And my mood only sours that night. I do a bit of digging and find out that a few other rangers have been placed on sabbatical for the duration of the rutting season—all of them women.</p><p>Is this how Washington felt when he heard about Benedict Arnold? Weathers is a woman like me, she <em>has</em> to know how hard it is for us in this field, yet here she is, enabling our mistreatment.</p><p>Well, fuck that and fuck her too.</p><p>The next morning, when dawn is little more than a greying of the skies, I sneak my way out of the cabin to go find the herd.</p><p>See, rutting season usually lasts for September, but it’s not a sure thing. It can start early, sometimes as early as mid-August. My herd was already showing signs of an early start when Weathers called me back. My plan is to establish myself at the start, and when the boor that Weathers has replacing me shows up, I’ll tell him in no uncertain terms that this is <em>my </em>turf and I can handle it and he can go cry to the superintendent if he doesn’t like it. And if Weathers still doesn’t think I’m up to snuff, she can fire me.</p><p>I don’t care anymore.</p><p>I find the herd with ease and sure enough, rutting season has started early. The heady musk can be smelled from the hillside where I’ve staked out, and below Prince is having his share of the females, bugling and calling out every time he ruts them. Sometimes the lesser males try to have a go when he’s done or sneak a quickie with the low-ranked females at the edge of the herd while he’s busy. It’s all pretty par the course. The herd is distracted and vulnerable, and it’s my job as ranger to make sure that nobody—poachers, say—goes out of their way to act when the herd is most vulnerable.</p><p>I’m so busy paying attention for threats to the herd that I don’t realize the elk are paying attention to <em>me.</em></p><p>The thing about wild animals is people think they’re dumb. They’re not. If you go into the wilderness, most animals around you know you’re there unless you take a lot of damn good steps to hide yourself. Even then, it’s not a sure thing. Prince and his elk knew I was there. They’d always known. They just kept their wary distance.</p><p>Today they stop keeping their distance. At first I barely notice, I’m so vigilant for threats. And as they continue approaching me, I chalk up their familiarity to the rutting season letting down their guard.</p><p>It’s not until the herd has me circled, the musk so heavy as to be overbearing, their hooves pawing at the ground, the wind stirring the leaves, that I realize something might be happening.</p><p>Prince is the one to approach me, low and baying, his nose black and shiny. His horns are tall and branching on his head, his coat a deep brown, and his eyes fixed fearlessly and unflinchingly upon me.</p><p>I’ve never been afraid of elk until this moment. Rising from my spot on the forest floor, I try to back away, but the shuffling and baying of the herd keeps me penned. Prince is now close enough to touch and for an awful moment I fear he might be trying to gore me.</p><p>But no. He snuffles at me, poking around my shirt and rubbing himself against me. God, the musk is <em>unbelievable, </em>the scent so strong and sharp I almost want to gag. I’m no idiot—I know that this behavior usually preludes an attempt to mate, and a quick peek between his legs confirms it as his penis is standing erect and ready to breed. Somehow Prince has gotten it into his head that I’m one of his hinds.</p><p>Trying to swat him away could agitate him and those antlers are dangerous, so I just stand there uncomfortably, hoping he’ll wise up. Animals can act strange during the mating season.</p><p>Prince’s actions are abrupt. Suddenly he grabs the hem of my shirt with his teeth and <em>rips, </em>the action shredding the cloth with incredible force and leaving me in my bare skin and bra to the whole world. “HEY!” I protest, trying to back away, but the herd pushes me back and Prince lowers his head. The antlers catch on my pants and with another <em>rrrrrrrrrrrrip</em> the second half of my outfit is ruined. The pressure knocks me off balance and I fall to the ground.</p><p>My mistake is switching over to hands and knees to brace myself before rising. It’s a twofold mistake. The first part of it is that the movement shifts my panties down around my legs, baring my pussy and making me gasp from the sudden bite of cold against my sex.</p><p>The second part is that Prince almost immediately mounts me.</p><p>My breath catches. “Oh fuck,” I half-whisper, half-whimper. I try to shake him off but it’s completely fruitless—he’s several hundred pounds and has me good and pinned with his weight alone.</p><p>I feel his cock tickling my mound, the sensation making me tense and moan. I don’t like how a little ghost of electric pleasure starts to rev up down there; my pussy doesn’t know that I’m about to get fucked, only that it’s getting stimulated and it likes it.</p><p>Prince holds there, dragging his cock along my mound, and I feel a trail of wetness as he dribbles pre across me. “No,” I sob, my hands and knees in the dirt, completely pinned and helpless from the weight of him on top of me. He drapes his forelegs over my shoulders, the hooves dangling down to press against my breasts. “No no no no no no no—”</p><p>Around me, the herd is shuffling with anticipation, the hinds and the lesser bulls all watching with interest. The smell of musk, the telltale scent of the rutting season, is all around me, smothering me like a blanket—in many ways it weighs on me harder than Prince does.</p><p>Finally, Prince decides he’s had enough foreplay. He decides to make the season live up to its name.</p><p>He ruts me.</p><p>His cock surges in, thick and powerful and <em>raw, </em>and my voice rises in a wordless scream because fuck, <em>fuck, </em>I’ve never had anything that big in me before, never ever <em>ever </em>and it feels so big that I could swear it’s ripping me apart and oh god I’m gonna die I’m gonna <em>die </em>I’m here getting fucked by an elk in the wilderness he just keeps rutting me over and over and over oh god he’s not <em>stopping </em>why won’t he stop I can’t catch my breath he’s so huge in me it’s hard to think and I like it oh fuck I actually do kinda like it the pleasure is bleeding through the pain they’re mingling and it’s hard to tell where one stops and another ends oh god dammit Prince please just slow down I’m begging you why are your hooves digging so hard into me your weight alone is almost more than I can bear don’t you understand I’m not your hind fuck please I don’t want this except why am I sobbing with bliss why is my pussy clenching around you why are you cumming in me and why am I cumming too—</p><p>I’m left sprawled facedown in the dirt, leaking cum, quivering and wracked with sobs and orgasmic aftershocks in the forest floor and trembling from what I refuse to acknowledge as the best sex I’ve ever had in my life.</p><p>If I’d comported myself, if I’d headed for home immediately once Prince was off of me and out of me, maybe things would have been different.</p><p>Instead, as I’m laying there, face down and ass up and smelling like sex, Prince’s musk rolling off of me like his seed is trickling out of my cunt, I hear smaller hooves approach and then—</p><p>Another bull elk mounts me.</p><p>My mind freezes. No. <em>No. </em>It can’t be. Not like this.</p><p>The bull on top of me is Hyperion, Prince’s younger brother and one of the herd’s more dominant bulls. His cock is lined up with my cunt as he prepares to breed the same place his brother did.</p><p>He’s not as big as Prince, but it doesn’t matter. A human can’t shake off an elk, it’s not possible. And fool that I was, I didn’t realize that Prince fucking me had sent a message to every bull in the area:</p><p>
  <em>This is a desirable mate.</em>
</p><p>“Nooooooo,” I moan, hands scrabbling uselessly in the grass as I try to raise myself up. Hyperion’s hooves are draped over my shoulder in imitation of his brother. He bugles once, the sound held long, as his cock presses against the outside of my slit. The touch once again makes a flurry of pleasure dance inside of me. “No <em>please</em>—”</p><p>My voice dies as Hyperion takes me.</p><p>He lasts almost as long as his brother, fucking me over and over, but his pace is less frantic, which gives me time to breathe. I try to fight my arousal, try to control my body, but the orgasm comes easier this time since the sudden intrusion of a bull elk’s cock isn’t being taken raw for the first time. Now there’s less pain, more pleasure, and I’m trembling shamefully in the dirt as Hyperion wrings a second orgasm from me. He slides out after dumping his seed in along with his brother’s.</p><p>Almost as soon as he’s gone, another takes his place.</p><p>And so it goes. The afternoon bleeds into the evening bleeds into the night, and all nonstop the bulls of the herd have their way with me, over and over again, every bull at least twice, some of them thrice.</p><p>Prince forces himself on me five separate times.</p><p>I lose track of how many times I cum, I lose track of time <em>itself;</em> for a few hours it’s almost impossible for me to think that I ever had a life beyond getting fucked into the dirt by a herd of horny ungulates. A ranger? Dreams of patrolling Yellowstone? Are you <em>joking?</em> I’m an elk fucker; always have been, always will be.</p><p>I’m too weary to try to escape or even to stand, so I just lay there in my ripped, dirty, cum-steeped clothes and let the herd have me again and again, let them fuck me till I’m incoherent from successive orgasms. The pungent cudgel that is a bull’s rutting musk is the only smell in the world. The dirt and dying grass between my fingers feels like home. I’ve come to familiarize myself so intimately with elk cock that I feel strangely empty, incomplete even, between sessions.</p><p>Finally dawn breaks and the herd has had their fill. Prince isn’t one for aftercare. He canters awa, and the hinds follow him, and the lesser bulls follow <em>them, </em>and I’m left sprawled in the dirt, empty-headed. They’d fucked all thought from me.</p><p>Over the hours I slowly regain my lucidity. I stagger to my feet, my legs like jelly from so many successive fuckings, and I wobble my way back to my makeshift camp. Throwing on a new outfit and burning the tattered scraps from last night, I pack up and head home.</p><p>Weathers was right. Dammit, she was right. I had no business being here.</p><p>I’m back at my cabin by nightfall, managing to make good time despite my aching cunt and the feeling of elk seed trickling down my thigh, and I lock the door and try to put the whole thing behind me.</p><p>Foolish. Foolish.</p><p>The changes are already starting when I wake up tomorrow. Itchy, tawny fur—no, not hair, <em>fur</em>—is sprouting everywhere: my arms, the back of my neck, the inside of my thighs, even down around my groin. My senses change—my eyesight remains more or less the same, but my hearing is more sensitive than usual, and my olfactory abilities are through the roof. It’s to be expected—my ears have started to lengthen, and my nose is turning wet, elongating slightly into a snout.</p><p>There’s a pressure at the base of my spine that tells me I’ll have a tail soon, a line of sensitive bumps near my lower stomach that are going to be my new teats. My fingernails are hardening, turning thick and dark grey and starting to consume my hands.</p><p>There’s no question. I’m <em>becoming </em>an elk.</p><p>Maybe on a different day I would have written it off as a bad dream. A nightmare. But what happened to me in that forest was real, so why shouldn’t this be? Why wouldn’t things get worse for me at this point?</p><p>I fret about my cabin for a few hours, cogent of the slowly creeping changes—the fur coming in at different places, growing thicker and coarser where it already is. The nibs near my lower tummy are growing larger and my normal breasts are shrinking. My fingers are basically just hooves now.</p><p>A knock at the door.</p><p>I bleat in worry before I realize what I did and cover my mouth, hoping they’ll think no one is there. Another knock, more insistent—and then the scraping of a key in the lock.</p><p>Only one person other than me has that key.</p><p>Weathers steps inside, sees me, and raises a hand to her head, sighing. “You poor, dumb bastard. I thought as much.”</p><p>I beg her for help, asking what I can do. The words come out stumbling—my elongating face isn’t made for speech, and it gets interspersed with the occasional bleat or bugle.</p><p>“Do? At this point, all you can do is change and accept your new life,” Weathers says. “You fool. Didn’t you trust in me to accept that I had a <em>reason </em>you shouldn’t be on duty?”</p><p>I try to say that I wouldn’t have gone if I’d have known <em>this </em>would happen! The words catch in my mouth halfway through but Weathers gets the gist. “And you would have believed me if I’d told you?” she says. “That the real reason you were being taken off was that the herd would gang-rape you and change your species? No, you would have gone regardless—or tried to get me fired.” She sits in my sofa and I toddle over to sit across from her. It’s hard—my legs are growing long and skinny, putting the bulk of my weight on quickly-growing hooves.</p><p>“I started here when I was your age, you know,” Weathers says. “Me and my twin sister. She was like you, so fiery… she snuck off to view the rutting season and was caught by the herd. Within forty-eight hours she was indistinguishable from any other hind, and within forty-eight more she was pregnant… you know, the alpha of your herd is actually one of her descendants. Small world.” She steepled her hands in front of her. “She seemed to enjoy her life once she accepted it. Hopefully you will too.”</p><p>I bugle out a protest; I’m <em>not </em>a hind, I’m <em>not </em>going to bear the young of Prince or any of those other bulls, there has to be a way to reverse this!</p><p>No words come out, only animal noises, and I realize crushingly that I’m probably never going to say human words again.</p><p>Weathers smiles humorlessly. “All you had to do was trust in me. Hell, you would have gotten <em>paid </em>for the month off. It was for the best. I would have loved for you to serve the refuge as a ranger. You were the best applicant in years… but no matter. You can serve us a different way. We always keep an eye on repopulation.”</p><p>I bugle indignantly. I’m not some elk slut, I don’t care if I change, I’m not going to have Prince’s young, I <em>refuse!</em></p><p>Weathers rises, walks over to my cabin door, opens it, and then barks an order: “Come. Outside now, come on.”</p><p>Something about her voice makes me instinctively follow—the thought of not going along is impossible. The part of me that’s still human—<em>fast fading</em>, I think fearfully—wonders if this is what it’s like for a horse or a dog or some other tame animal, instinctively following human commands.</p><p>I step through the door into the sunlit meadow outside my cabin. Waiting there is the herd.</p><p>And Prince.</p><p>The scent of musk is heavy in the air; he paws the ground, snorting, his cock almost fully erect, and I can feel my body responding. He’s my dominant, my <em>alpha, </em>and if he wants me he can have me, it’s what the rut is for—</p><p>I shake my head, bleating. No no no no no no <em>no,</em> that’s not right, I’m not going to do this!</p><p>Turning on shaky legs, I make to head back inside, but Weathers shuts the door. “It’s over,” she says flatly, a whiff of apology in her voice. “I’ve seen this happen eight more times since my sister. Usually it’s rangers, once it was a tourist who got lost, once it was a poacher, once a wildlife photographer who thought a picture of the rut would make her career. All of them women who were caught by the herd and all of them rutted, transformed, and assimilated. You won’t be any different, so just accept it.”</p><p>By now I’m well over halfway transformed. I probably look like some monster from local myth. I try to protest, take a step, and my wobbly legs decided they’ve had enough bipedalism. I fall to all fours, my hooves landing assuredly, my tail (tail? <em>Tail?</em> I have a tail…) puffing up and my ears flicking.</p><p>I’ll never stand on two legs again.</p><p>Prince is prancing up to me, erect, and the musk is so overpowering I can’t <em>think</em>. My body knows it wants this, it knows it was what it’s made for, and as a tiny part of me protests, somehow understanding that if Prince ruts me this time it’ll seal it, I’ll never be the same again, the rest of me turns and presents to him. Weathers slips inside to watch from behind my window.</p><p>Prince mounts and claims me.</p><p>He slips inside with relative ease now—hinds have bigger entrances and tunnels than human women, and whereas before he was a titan trying to shove himself into a porthole, now it’s like I’m <em>made </em>for him. I part around him and a plaintive bugle escapes my mouth, which is now a long snout and fully deerlike, no longer recognizable as human. Prince leans on me, the weight no longer as overbearing as it was since I’m bigger now, too, and then he starts fucking me.</p><p>Every push is heaven—not just the pleasure anyone would associate with sex, but something more. I’m a hind, I’m in <em>rut, </em>and my body is desperate to be bred and it rewards me for sating that need with spikes of bliss and endorphins that go beyond what Prince can offer me.</p><p>I’m mostly transformed already, but Prince’s ministrations speed it along. With every thrust I feel my legs lengthening; my human breasts shrink into nothingness while the new udder at the base of my loins begins to swell up, ready to brim with milk for the calves I’m going to bear. My senses sharpen—my hearing gets better and better and my sense of smell explodes exponentially, washing me in the raw musk of Prince. The smell is a message as clear as any postcard, telling me “you are mine, your womb is mine, you will take my seed and bear my calves” and who could challenge such a message? Who would <em>want </em>to?</p><p>My neck lengthens, fur sprouts everywhere as my human hair retreats, and as Prince cums in me, sealing my fate to the herd forever, I raise my voice and bugle high. The last kernel of the old human me gives a soft whimpering sigh and fades forever, and what is left is… the new me.</p><p>I still have cognition, I still have my memory of my human life, I’m still <em>intelligent </em>after a fashion, but I’m also no longer human and will never be again, and the fact that Prince just mated me and impregnated me seems as natural as the fact that rain falls from clouds, as natural as the fact that I need to graze.</p><p>When Prince finishes, the pleasure ebbing in me, I dip my head to graze near the steps to my human self’s old cabin, and the door creaks open. The iron-haired old woman steps out and runs her hand comfortingly along my neck. “You really should have listened,” she said. I look at her confusedly. Listened? But if I’d listened, then I wouldn’t be here with Prince! I wouldn’t be part of the herd, I wouldn’t have gotten to rut with him, I wouldn’t be bearing his offspring (for there is no doubt in my mind that he has planted calves in me), I wouldn’t get to live and breathe the leaves and the fall and the cool mountain air.</p><p>“Still,” she was saying, “while I would have preferred a ranger, I suppose a breeder will have to do.” I snort softly. That sounds <em>much </em>better. I nuzzle against her, and then with Prince’s bugling cry leading me on, I turn and follow him back into the forest with the rest of my herd.</p><p>We will mate several times during the rutting season to ensure I bear a strong and healthy calf; and I also will have to graze and stock up as much as I can. Winter will be hard, especially with young growing in my belly.</p><p>---</p><p>“You look quite promising.” Weathers set down her papers and smiled at the new applicant, a young woman from British Columbia. “I hope you enjoy it here.”</p><p>The new hire nodded. “Of course, ma’am. I want so desperately to help the elk!”</p><p>“Very good.”</p><p>Winter had passed and spring was here, and the season for new hires was upon them. Weathers had moved an experienced ranger to the second-biggest herd, and this new hire would be given a smaller one.</p><p>Stepping out to show the new hire her cabin, both women stopped. There on the far side of the field was a huge herd of elk, one that Weathers knew was one of the largest in the refuge.</p><p>“Oh my!” the newest ranger said, pointing. “Look how big the hinds are!”</p><p>Indeed, it was late spring and the hinds were due in a month. They were round and heavy with calves, their udders swollen with milk. They moved laboriously along the field, grazing here and there.</p><p>“That one,” the younger woman said, pointing to a female at the edge, “is humongous! But her coat is quite fetching.”</p><p>Her opinion wasn’t wrong—either of them. The female’s coat was indeed fine, and she was so big that some might have been astonished that she could even move. Weathers, who’d spent decades around the elk, knew: twins.</p><p>“She’s new to the herd,” Weathers said. “She’s had a very interesting first year, but I think she’s settling into her role. We’re depending on her to help the herd repopulate.”</p><p>“A newcomer, huh? I hope she likes it here!”</p><p>As the new hire finished, the gravid hind raised her head. Still chewing grass, she fixed gazes with Weathers for a moment before turning her attention back to the field. She needed a lot of food to nourish her young.</p><p>Weathers shook the hind from her mind. There was work to be done. “I think,” she said, leading the new hire along, “that she’s learned to love her role.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>At least she seems satisfied in her own way...</p><p><a href="https://twitter.com/FestivalGrey">Check me out on Twitter</a> if you'd like! And don't be afraid to leave a comment~</p></blockquote></div></div>
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